Forensics

The PwC forensic services team in the Channel Islands is supported by 300 forensic specialists, investigators and industry experts in other member firms accross the European part of the PwC global network, who specialise in investigations and the resolution of financial disputes.

The team of experts are drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds such as revenue authorities, police and government fraud offices, the legal, construction and insurance industry, and financial service regulators.

If you have a financial dispute, or have concerns about possible areas of vulnerability in your organisation, our experts can assist.

This service is designed to assist your organisation in dealings with the regulator in the event that a regulator instigates an investigation under law. Here we can assist in your management of the investigation and communications with the investigation team.

Conversely, a number of organisations seek comfort on their capability of withstanding a regulatory investigation, i.e. a form of precautionary due diligence. In such instances we discuss and agree with management their areas of concern, tailor and implement a plan and then report to management on our findings as to the areas of potential regulatory compliance vulnerability. This is of particular importance to the financial service sector of the Channel Islands environment.

The fight to deter money laundering and terrorist financing is a high priority for law enforcement agencies and financial regulators around the globe. The financial services sector, in particular, faces significant reputation and regulatory risk should it be deemed to have inadequate arrangements to prevent money laundering.

In the Channel Islands PwC has experience assisting clients with the development of compliant but cost-effective processes and controls to protect against financial crime risk, including fraud, money laundering and market abuse, and combine wherever necessary the local expertise of our own people, with specialist knowledge from our colleagues in the UK firm an other member firms within our global network.

We work with clients who face a range of potential issues, you may want to enhance the effectiveness and cost efficiency of your anti-money laundering and financial crime processes, you may have uncovered an incidence of suspected money laundering, or you may be under review by a regulator. You may want to ensure that you are in compliance with anti-money laundering and other financial crime regulations .

We support our clients with these challenges, from providing comfort that you are compliant, or have a programme in place to become compliant with AML and financial crime regulations, delivering enhanced efficiency and effectiveness of anti-money laundering processes through to process redesign and implementing technology solutions, or providing effective management of incidents that may create regulatory and reputation risks.

Drawing on skills and experience acquired over many years in a range of disciplines, our investigations team is ready to assist clients in the prevention, detection, investigation and remediation of fraud, financial crime and other irregularities.

Whenever required we call upon the expertise of our colleagues in PwC UK and other member firms in the Global network, bringing together detection and investigations specialists with experts in forensic technology solutions, combining extensive practical experience, formal training and a wide range of tools and techniques to detect and investigate fraud. Consequently we can write expert reports and act as expert witnesses in many jurisdictions.

The decision to recover any assets misappropriated will be informed by a wide range of issues, including the size of the losses, whether the target of any recovery action has sufficient assets to warrant a claim, as well as the location of those assets and whether there's a desire to avoid publicity. We can assist clients in this decision making process and in pursuing any resulting recovery actions.

We can also help evaluate, remediate or augment your anti-fraud programmes by providing an overall fraud risk assessment and by designing and/or testing existing anti-fraud programmes and controls.

Our team regularly write expert reports and act as expert witnesses in many jurisdictions. The required resource is available no matter where a potential litigation is being taken.

We have the legislative and regulatory knowledge to advise on strategy and solutions in the event of a Channel Islands, or other, jurisdictional tax investigation being launched against your organisation, or one of your clients.

Our team of tax investigators include ex revenue officials, some of whom have worked in the UK Inland Revenue fraud and compliance division. This team has the knowledge to know which solutions to tailor to specific problems.

Most businesses will face a dispute situation from time to time. Whether this is a dispute with a supplier, a customer, a regulator, insurer or a whole range of related issues, our service is specific and focused and we can provide an unrivalled range of industry expertise and access to a number of specialists, including valuation experts and economists – drawing on both our Channel Island team and our colleagues in PwC's global network of firms.

Depending on which party we are acting for, we seek to maximise the benefit and can provide expert reports and witnesses in the event of litigation.

We can assist you throughout a dispute process, whether in an informal forum or in litigation, mediation or arbitration.

You may be faced with involvement in business dispute, litigation/arbitration and require an expert witness or an independent investigation of facts, you may have uncovered an intellectual property infringement, be involved in an insurance claim, or you may need an independent evaluation of loss and damage arising from a tort or breach of contract.

We can support you by providing independent advice to assess and evaluate the merits of a dispute, analysing financial material, evaluating loss and damage, utilising proprietary computer forensic techniques to capture, manage and analyse data for disclosure/discovery. We can provide support at mediations including quantification of loss and damage, financial, economic and accounting analyses, and can provide expert witness evidence in proceedings.

In most businesses there is a loophole, a fraud threat. In those that there isn't, one has to question the 'cost/benefit' of their controls. We are often asked to undertake an assessment of potential exposure to fraud such as:

Your website - our 'poacher turned gamekeeper' team of hackers have a 100% success rate in hacking into client sites - at their request of course!

Your business expansion or contraction plans - have you assessed the cultural and business environment? Have you assessed the weaknesses that will be created in the control and monitoring procedures which arise merely because of the changing circumstances

Is everything 'rosy in the garden'? We all know the dangers of complacency and a fraud specific vulnerability review of your whole organisation, or just specific units or even of a particular transaction stream will generally remove such complacency.

These are proactive reviews and provide a degree of comfort to management that they are aware of the areas where fraud is a real business threat. This information then allows you to determine what, if any, action would be appropriate recognising the relevant costs involved.